


Heavy Words Are Hard To Take

by WillozSummers (SammieRie)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/F, Love Confessions, Mentions of canon-typical violence but no real descriptions?, Minor Angst at the beginning but oh well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammieRie/pseuds/WillozSummers
Summary: Dawn knows enough of loss to know the importance of letting people know you love them while you still can.
Kennedy always has a quick retort until Dawn finally renders her speechless.
//or: love confessions in the middle of battlefields from girls who grew up as soldiers





	

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'ed, so any mistakes are mine. struck by inspiration late at night and this happened, so here it is.

Dawn knew what it was to lose people. To have them yanked away in an instant, another piece of your heart missing. She knew what it was to be left wondering, desperately raking your memory for the last time you told them what they meant to you. The last time you said it, put it into words. _“I love you.”_

She’d spent six months telling a robot replacement of her sister all the things she’d kept hidden for ~~15 years~~ ~~a year~~ her whole life. Confessions of childhood rule-breaking and all the times she let her take the blame with mom. Told her stupid things about every crush she’d ever had that she found more fitting to write in her journal than tell to her sister. And she told her, more times than she could count: _I love you. You’re my hero. Long before you ever became a Slayer. You were always my hero, Buffy. And I wish, for once, you hadn’t been._ The world may have needed Buffy to be a hero then, but Dawn was just left needing a sister.

In the hole of her sister’s absence, she’d found a ~~second~~ ~~third~~ fourth mother. One who liked to wake her up with pancakes and soft smiles. Tuck her into bed with warm tea and warmer hugs. By the time Dawn met Kennedy, she’d spent close to a year with a home filled with more ghosts than people. With nightmares of the day she’d curled up against the wall of what was once her mother’s room ~~, then her mothers’,~~ keeping a lonely vigil over a cold body and a pool of blood. She hadn’t eaten pancakes since the day her sister cheated death ( _for a third time)_ and her makeshift mother didn’t. She had fewer words left unspoken but was left with armfuls of times her chest burst with love and she didn’t put it into words. After pancakes, after milkshakes, after board games and thumb wrestling and impromptu sleepovers… so many times she felt more love for the witch she viewed as family than for members of her own flesh and blood and she didn’t let her know. _Did she know? Did she know how important she was? How much her absence would be felt? Did she know? ~~I love you.~~_

Dawn Summers knew what it was to lose people, and to live the rest of your life with your unspoken love on the tip of your tongue, no one left to hear it. That’s what had landed her here, in the middle of a fight, a squad of Slayers vs a pack of vampires, her girlfriend staring at her in shock as the words “I love you” tumbled from her lips sporadically. Dawn hadn’t meant to say them. But Dawn knew the dangers of keeping the words locked away, knew waiting for the right moment could mean being left waiting the rest of your life. Waiting for the right moment could mean having only a tombstone to say them to. She’d rather say to it to a warm body and risk anger, risk rejection, than speak the words to a rock too smooth (the bodies she loves all have scars) and too cold (she craves the warm blood that proves they’re alive).

Dawn has been dating Kennedy for five months now. The girl has seen demons that look more bizarre than anything in a Dr. Suess book. She’s faced the world’s most ancient evil, charged into an apocalypse, and stared into the crater of what used to be a town. Dawn has never known the other girl to be speechless. She takes after Faith in always having a quip or a jib at the ready, innuendos rolling over her tongue with a bravado that’s sometimes hard to see past. Even when she’d found out she was dating a mystical ball of energy in human form, she’d maintained her air of nonchalance in a way that rivalled Oz. Yet somehow, confronted with three simple words, the girl found herself incapable of response, mouth opening and closing, nothing coming out but air.

Dawn, for her part, simply let the words hang in the air. She made no attempt to take them back or cover them up. She may not have said them with intention, but her heart was fully behind the statement. She had stunned herself with the confession, but upon realizing the weight of what she’d spoken, she simply smiled at the way her heart seemed to be bursting with it.

A battlefield was no time for spontaneous love confessions. The girls could have spent minutes staring at one another in stunned silence, Dawn cautiously waiting for Kennedy to regain her powers of speech, but the tension hanging in the hair between them was broken by one of the other Slayers being thrown back into them, hitting Kennedy in the back and causing her to stumble, landing in a heap on top of Dawn. 

They bolted up, disoriented but quick to jump back into the fray. Dawn grew up in interrupted important conversations, confessions aborted by unexpected demons; she was a girl in love and a soldier in equal parts, able to switch roles easily. Kennedy grew up in a family that too often used money to show love, unused to hearing three simple words. Kennedy had trained as a soldier in a war the world ignored since she was old enough to hold a crossbow. She was glad to have the fight as a distraction, more suited to trading blows with creatures of the night than trying to make sense of how her heart felt.

 ---

The fight was won that day with no casualties for the side of the Slayers, but the war raged on as it had for centuries. Dawn kissed her girlfriend and twined their hands together and took her home to wipe the blood from her cheek and curl in bed together; she acted as though nothing had changed and so Kennedy tried to do the same - she put on a cocky smile and a mischievous grin and a seductive look at all the right moments, but in the back of her mind, Kennedy was still reeling from Dawn’s confession. Those three simple words, left nagging at the base of her skull. Left her wondering if she felt the same way…

Still, life went on. Kennedy had training and patrols and missions and Dawn had research and mission planning and her stubborn refusal to stay at home while Kennedy went out fighting, so they’d always find themselves together in the midst of the fights. Kennedy found herself coming away with a few extra bruises, accidentally getting distracted mid-battle watching Dawn fight more frequently than she cared to admit. Sure, she found her girlfriend sexy when she was staking vampires and slaying demons, but it was more than that. She was in awe of the grace to her movements, the deliberateness of her actions, how calculated her moves seemed to be, the way she always tried to position herself as a shield, to Kennedy as well as other slayers…

Being a shield was noble, was admirable. Was also a nice way to end up with a knife in your leg in the middle of a dark alley. (“Better my leg than your back,” Dawn reasoned, when Kennedy tried to chastise her for her actions.) Kennedy saw one of the other Slayers calling for Buffy, for back-up, for help. She saw the red seeping out around the knife and herself ripping her tanktop to use as a tourniquet and suddenly she saw Dawn _smiling_. Dawn was _smiling_ and Kennedy didn’t understand why and she felt anger rising in her at the other girl’s disregard for danger but then Dawn’s lips were moving and Kennedy saw her girlfriend saying _something_ but Kennedy couldn’t hear any of it. All she could hear was her blood rushing in her ears, pounding through her whole skull so loud it was deafening. She felt a hand at her shoulder pulling her back and saw an ambulance had shown up and she still couldn’t hear the sirens over the sound of her own panicked heartbeat. Her instincts led her into the back of the vehicle, paramedics taking over applying pressure to the wound, and she found herself clutching Dawn’s hand, eyes glued to her girlfriend’s face. The adrenaline had worn off and Dawn was left grimacing at the pain in her leg, but there was still the ghost of a smile on her face, and Kennedy’s brows knit up in confusion.

It wasn’t until they had reached the hospital and the back doors to the ambulance were flung open and the cool night air hit Kennedy again that everything came rushing in. Kennedy was overwhelmed by the sounds of the sirens overhead and the yelling of the paramedics and her girlfriend’s pained breaths. As they whisked Dawn down a corridor out of her sight, to pull the knife from her leg and stitch her up, Kennedy was left staring after her.

As she sank down the wall, waiting for Buffy to get to the hospital, she realized why Dawn had been smiling. She realized that with her blood pounding in her ears, her heart had spoken what her mind had only now caught up to. She’d finally said those three words she’d spent two weeks overthinking. And when Dawn came back, stitched up leg wound and doped up on pain medications, they’d be the first words she’d hear again.

_“I love you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by an ask meme on tumblr, so if you want to prompt me or just come join my Kennedawn rowboat, find me @ willozsummers


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